Around the end of Feb. 2007 I was bit with a serious case of nostalgia for the BBS days. It started while dealing with some modem headaches at work, and blossomed into a full-time DOS-based BBS. Well, not entirely true. It's actually running on Windows XP, for a very good reason. More on that in a minute. When I started this project, I was wearing rose colored glasses. When I finished, I had little hair left on my head. I'll spare the reader the gory details of what didn't work as they are wholly uninteresting and in retrospect completely silly. I'll assume that the prospective sysop has a stable internet connection that allows its users to run servers. I'll say this much up front: DON'T DO IT. Wildcat! WINServer is a significant improvement over Wildcat! 4 for DOS. There's no reason to telnet-enable Wildcat! 4 other than being too cheap or extremely nostalgic. Santronics has frequent sales, so keep your eyes peeled. If you'll be purchasing a few items at once, email or call Andrea, she'll probably give you an excellent deal.
First things first. Virtualization a la VMware, Virtual PC, or even Bochs and Qemu will shackle a 3GHz machine to a grueling pace. The safest bet is a multitasking OS that can provide compartmentalized DOS services to each node, preferably in such a way that running out of FILES will not be possible. First off, Novell DR-DOS is specifically mentioned in the Wildcat! Sysop's Guide as Not Recommended. This is sound advice as DR-DOS in its default installation gobbles up every last drop of the lower 640k. FreeDOS, MS-DOS, IBM PC-DOS, and Windows 9x with the appropriate multitasker will work but each machine will be bound by the maximum number of files that can be opened under DOS. The Sysop Guide makes note that one can run about eight nodes per machine. Naturally, as the author of the Sysop's Guide worked for Mustang and was intimately familiar with Wildcat!, this information is spot on. While it is possible to load 24 nodes under Windows 98, not a single node will actually be able to handle a login. As mentioned earlier, the ideal platform will provide a near-perfect DOS while isolating each node in something akin to a virtual machine... a Virtual Dos Machine. It just so happens that under NT-based Windows systems, such a feature is offered. It's even named NT Virtual DOS Machine or ntvdm for short. Problem solved. Run your BBS under Windows XP. It is unknown at this time if Windows Vista will provide a proper environment. If anyone has the means to give it a go, please do so and get back to me.
So now we have an OS. Now it's time to setup Wildcat! What's that? Runtime error 200? As it happens, quite a bit of DOS software, in particular anything written with Borland's development tools, has some weird timing issues that cause divide by zero errors on fast machines. A utility is available that will patch anything compiled with Turbo Pascal, but it is very specific towards turbo pascal. It won't even fix a piece of software compiled with the standard Borland Pascal. There's a TSR called r200fix that will correct pretty much all of the weird timing issues that cause the crashes. As each cmd window that offers dos services is a separate instances of the ntvdm, you'll need to load r200fix for each node or any time you work with the old dos software. It may be advisable to add it to your autoexec.nt script which is called for each new ntvdm invocation.
Finally, it's time to get Wildcat! installed. Follow the standard instructions. Pay close attention to the details regarding multinode operation. Read through the Sysop's Guide before installing. Be especially aware if you know you'll be using multiple computers.
Now that you have Wildcat! running, it's time to make your BBS telnetable. For this you'll need to prodcuts from PC Micro, NetSerial and NetFoss. NetSerial provides a telnettable virtual modem, while NetFoss allows a DOS application that can work with FOSSIL drivers have access to those virtual serial ports. The setup for NetSerial couldn't be easier. In addition, they give a nice discount for Sysops. Rather than $75, NetSerial for sysops is a mere $25. Fiddling with any other software will easily blow more than $25 of your time. Take the easy route. I'd recommend starting out with a handful of nodes. You'll probably never need more than five nodes, so start with that. Setup five serial ports, use the appropriate port number, the standard port for telnet is recommended, as a virtual modem that allows incoming connections. Couldn't be simpler, eh?
You'll never be able to get Wildcat! to use a non-hardware serial port without a FOSSIL driver. That's where NetFoss comes into play. It can be downloaded from PC Micro's site. While a telnet server is included with NetFoss, I found it easier to use the FOSSIL driver with NetSerial, not to mention NetSerial provides the ability to watch the data on the serial ports should something go wonky. Read the documentation for NetFoss, in particular Using NetFoss with a com port. Since each ntvdm is for all intents and purposes a separate DOS machine, you'll want NetFoss to always be node 1. Let's say you want Wildcat! node 5 to use virtual com port 8. You'll run NetFoss as netfoss /n1 /c8.
Use wcModem to configure a modem profile that locks the serial port at 115200 and also allows a slightly longer time for carrier detection. When the NetSerial folks said it was a virtual modem, they weren't kidding. It acts like a modem. It may be possible to shorten the connect times, but I can't figure that out at the moment. Feel free to use my Wildcat! modem profile.
\BIN\R200FIX \NETFOSS\NETFOSS /n1 /c8 SET WCMDM=NETSER SET WCPORTID=1 SET WCNODEID=5 WILDCAT